Sabatini's stories abound with drama and melodrama, action and excitement and brilliant colour, as well as minute period detail. No writer, not Scott, nor Dumas, nor Stevenson, has brought the past to life more vividly or accurately . . . He is to be learned from by any who seek instruction in the craft of writing or the matter of history. This century has seen no greater expert in the two combined.
- George McDonald Fraser,
One wonders if there is another storyteller so adroit at filling his pages with intrigue and counter-intrigue, with danger threaded with romance, with a background of lavish colour, of silks and velvets, of swords and jewels
Daily Telegraph
A gadzooks romance with a generous measure of blood, revenge, sacrifice, villainy, adventure, and heart-interest
The Nation